RE: [Futurework] Future of learning

[Cordell, Arthur: ECOM]

Agree with you Lawry.   There is a great danger in dumbing down and, going further, creating material that is false but believed because it hasn't been peer reviewed and a great many people access that material.  It becomes a self-fulfilling sort of thing.   I find that the better has been the education of the individual, especially the ability to do research the old way, the better able to sift through and make sense of online material.  I worry that kids that have not developed research skills will take too many things online as fact.  Chatting about something on a blog does not make it factual or true.    But we have to admit that the Net and search engines such as Google change everything.    arthur -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]On Behalf Of Lawrence deBivort Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 2:51 PM To: 'Karen Watters Cole'; futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca Cc: Art Goodtimes (Art Goodtimes); 'Jonathan Eddison' Subject: RE: [Futurework] Future of learning Greetings to all.   Travels over for a while, I hope.   There are several significant differences between books and on-line sources that worry me when it comes to actions like UT’s.   The process of publishing a book takes its content through several steps – agents, reviewers, corrections, editing – that tend to provide the book with some vetting. On-line sources can be posted on sites that look solid but aren’t. We have in several of our discussions here run into a significant amount of false or unvetted material.  Yes, we can rely on the reader to do some of the vetting himself/herself, but how much? Even on our own list, we have had materials attached that are shaky at best. Once published, it is quite hard to alter a book; one can be reasonably certain that what one is reading is what the author wrote.  With digital sources, forgery, improper deletion, etc. are frighteningly easy. Plagiarism loves digital sourcing. Books are portable: laptops and internet access less so. Might tethering ourselves (even with wireless) to ‘reading’ centers inhibit reading? I am still waiting for a truly reader-friendly screen…. And a laptop that doesn’t need recharging every few hours.   The idea that on-line sources can replace books may make a librarian’s job easier and library operations cheaper,  but glossing the loss of books over with a more seductive student ‘chat’ center may be a significant mistake, and part of the continuing dumbing down of education.  I’ll stick with a books –on-line source mix, remembering the strengths and weaknesses of both.   Cheers, Lawry       From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Karen Watters Cole Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 2:21 PM To: futurework@fes.uwaterloo.ca Subject: [Futurework] Future of learning   As everyone knows, like work, the internet is changing learning centers, including academic research and libraries. Some of it is harder to get used to than others…but like FW, modern technology is restoring a sense of gathering places/community to share ideas and conversation.  kwc Academic libraries empty stacks for online centers By Kris Axtman, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor, August 23, 2005   AUSTIN, TEXAS - When students wander into the former University of Texas undergraduate library this fall, gone will be the "Quiet Please" signs, the ban on cheeseburgers or sodas, the sight of solemn librarians restocking books.  The fact is, there will be no more books to restock. The UT library is undergoing a radical change, becoming more of a social gathering place more akin to a coffeehouse than a dusty, whisper-filled hall of records. And to make that happen, the undergraduate collection of books had to go.   This summer, 90,000 volumes were transferred to other collections in the campus's massive library system - leaving some to wonder how a library can really be a library if it has no tomes.  But a growing number of colleges and universities are rethinking and retooling their libraries to better serve students reared in a digital age.   "While libraries are still focused on their physical collections, they aren't the sole purpose anymore," says John Shank, director of the Center for Learning Technologies at Penn State Berks College in Reading. The advent of the Internet and the digitization of information has transformed the way students learn, experts concur, and libraries are scrambling to keep up.   "For most children coming of age today, information and information technology are really merging so that they don't see any disconnect between the two," says Frances Jacobson Harris, author of "I Found It on the Internet: Coming of Age Online."   To underscore that point, last week a new public high school in Vail, Ariz., become one of the first to opt out of supplying textbooks altogether in the hopes that students will be more engaged in learning. Especially designed as a textbook-free environment, all students were assigned laptops instead and will read and turn in most homework online.   At UT, the biggest challenge has been changing antiquated notions of a library's role in learning. "While most people have been hugely supportive of this idea, some have been sort of grieving over this iconic loss of the undergraduate library. I think what they are really grieving is the passing of the book as the means of scholarly communication," says Fred Heath, vice provost for the general libraries, adding that UT is the nation's fifth-largest academic library with more than 8 million volumes.   So to ease some of the apprehension, administrators took the word "library" out of their vocabulary when referring to the Flawn Academic Center. When classes start Aug. 31, it will be filled with colorful overstuffed chairs for lounging, barstools for people watching, and booths for group work. In addition to almost 250 desktop computers, there will be 75 laptops available for checkout, wireless Internet access, computer labs, software suites, a multimedia studio, a computer help desk and repair shop, and a cafe.   While students are still required to read books at the undergraduate level, they are increasingly being asked to use a variety of different online sources.  "Libraries are about information, and books were simply a way that information was packaged," says Judy Ashcroft, director of the Instructional Innovation and Assessment division at UT. "But more information is being packaged online, and we have a duty to provide access to [it]."   Some see the shift as par for the course. Indeed, when the concept of an undergraduate library was first introduced, it was considered "revolutionary."  Originally, undergrads weren't allowed to peruse the stacks. They had to leaf through the card catalogue, fill out a form, and a librarian would retrieve the book they were looking for. All that changed when Harvard University created the first undergraduate library in the 1950s. The concept was to gather a collection geared toward the kinds of things undergrads were studying and make it easily accessible to students.   Librarians say the way people use libraries varies dramatically. Faculty see them as warehouses for their materials; graduate students use them as second offices. But for today's undergrads, libraries have simply become "places to be," says Damon Jaggers, associate director of Student and Branch Services at UT.   As a result, a growing number of colleges - from Stanford to the University of Arizona to Georgia Tech - are making significant changes to their libraries. Already, these revamped learning centers are being met with huge success. Penn State, for instance, found that the number of students coming into the library went up by 300 percent when it opened its new information commons in 2001.   But what of the serendipity that comes from browsing the stacks? Librarians say that can now be done online as well with bibliographical weblinks, but this new age won't preclude books completely. "There are millions of students reading Harry Potter [books]," says Ms. Harris. "The difference is they might ... share their tidbits in a blog. The online library world has room for all of that."   http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0823/p01s05-legn.html

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